Volume Two - Academic Conferences

Michael Flavin
From an Activity Theory perspective, Wikipedia comprises a tool that disrupts the rules of the activity
system, and the division of labour. Students are no longer reliant on their lecturers or their institution
for information. Tools (technologies in this case) also impact on the subject and the community by
blurring the lines between study and recreation. Learning is less easily contained, and less easily
demarcated away from other activities. Hence the perception of learning may be shifting away from an
activity confined to a particular time (the working day within the context of the conventional academic
calendar) and a particular place (the campus). New tools, through which human activity is mediated,
are shifting the terms of human activity.
Technologies for learning can be disruptive in the sense that access to learning is increasingly
controlled by learners. Technologies have prompted change, as the H.E.I. does not exert control over
what material is accessed, when it is accessed, or the scale and nature of learner collaboration.
Applying Activity Theory to one of the interviews, the fact that students can post learning materials on
the University’s V.L.E. comprises a change in the division of labour within the activity system, yet the
lecturer is working positively with the change, and sharing some control of the learning. Thus a new
tool (and a flexible approach within the explicitly social nodes in the bottom row of the activity system)
is enhancing learning for the whole community.
Hereafter, the research will further explore the impact of disruptive technologies, using Activity Theory
to evaluate the impact of disruptive technologies in higher education learning and teaching, especially
the extent to which the disruptive uses of technologies to support learning are blurring the lines
between study, work and recreation. The research will also use the Community of Practice theory to
examine the multiple identities formed by learners, and the extent to which different identities meld as
lines blur between different economic and social practices.
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